2 week limit on potions, components and herbs

[Cherek]

Okay,

Since I am now responsible for getting people to play Genesis there's one thing I might like to tweak a little. The two week limit on saving herbs, potions and other spell components.

The original idea of the two week limit of this was to make players login more often. Which is a good idea of course. Now, does it work in reality? For me personally it's always worked in the opposite way. I haven't played for a while, feel like playing again, login, notice everything is gone, and don't wanna play. Sure, the limit has sometimes kept me logging in once a week or so, but only I only log in for a few seconds to keep my stuff, and then log out. I dont feel it has made me actually play more. And eventually I've forgotten how much time has past since my last login, and ultimately lost my stuff - again.

Thats my personal experiences with the two week limit. What are yours? Do you think it's working and makes you play more? Or do you feel like me, it just makes you angry when you lose your stuff?

I've spoken to Gorboth about this before and he's fine with both keeping or removing it. (At least he was last time we discussed it:)). But it would be interesting to hear what you all feel about it.

A third option would be to keep it, but add an auto generated mail that's sent a few days before you lose your stuff, reminding you to login. That's similar to how many games do these "reward to play" features. They often come with a reminder. I definitely think that would make more sense, but it would also be "spammy". However, there should of course be an option to turn mailing on or off so it'll only be spammy if you wanted it to be.

So what do you all think?

Personally I would probably remove it, and possible add some other reward for logging in. Perhaps using the achievements we might have one day. To me this is more like a punishment for NOT logging in, than a reward for logging in. Wednesday and friday quests for example are nice rewards for being active, and I think better ways to reward activity.

[Kitriana]

I actually like the idea of having the option of setting your options to have an email sent to your email account.

1) It will get people to register their email accounts .. that might help with future promotions.
2) It should hopefully draw people back in ... "You haven't played in awhile... "

[Jhael]

This is basically what's keeping me from logging in right now. I accidentally missed the 2 week cutoff by a couple hours and really don't feel like herbing all my stuff again.

[cotillion]

I think we've mistakenly started down this path of things saving...
Time to decide if we want items to save or not.

Some items save sometimes is not a good policy.

[Kas]

My experience is that if you loose your stuff, you won't play.

You return to the realm after a break/holiday/whatever, and you want to get back on the horse again, but only to realize in order to do that, additional hours are now necessary for you to actually be able to do so.

Basically, you are punished for taking a long needed break/vacation, and acts as the reverse of an incentive for you to play again, and I've seen this happen several times in the tower and it was never a good thing. The outcome was always negative/annoying.

[Kitriana]

If we could have herb/potion "lockers" .. that would remove the need for saving them

[gorboth]

I think we've mistakenly started down this path of things saving...
Time to decide if we want items to save or not.

Some items save sometimes is not a good policy.

Meaning, perhaps no herbs should save at all, or potions, or anything other than quest rewards and guild items, etc? Is that what you mean by this distinction?

G.

[Jhael]

I think we've mistakenly started down this path of things saving...
Time to decide if we want items to save or not.

Some items save sometimes is not a good policy.

Meaning, perhaps no herbs should save at all, or potions, or anything other than quest rewards and guild items, etc? Is that what you mean by this distinction?

G.

Given the current spell component aspect of many of these types of things, I think making nothing save would be a huge mistake for player retention/attraction.

If the component system were to change, and herbs/potions/etc were purely utility items, this would be an interesting discussion. But given that I require herb A, leftover B, and/or something C to cast spell X ... you'd nerf every spellcasting guild into oblivion. Also given how long the current guild recodes have taken, I think we'd be best to just ignore this as a potential solution.

[Draugor]

Aye, the limit is silly imo, I know that alot of people that loggs on and sees that the 500+ skunksberries they had and other herbs are gone.
When seeing this most of them just loose the will that drove them to loggon again in the first place since farming those quantities of herbs again is a bitch.

If the server can handle it we should remove that limit, as long as the char is not deleted from absence... let it keep the herbs/components

[Zhar]

Personally I'm against herbs and leftovers being spell components. I'd rather see each magic guild have a shop with components where you can (have to) restock on needed stuff (pinch of sulphur, piece of white cloth etc. etc.) and only very few spells actually requiring components you can't buy in said shop and have to find in the realms somewhere (not herbs/gems/leftovers).